Republicans Take a Cue From Corncob TV and 'Coffin Flop'
Republicans Take a Cue From Corncob TV and 'Coffin Flop'
The party that pretends to want to crack down on the "weaponization of the government" is constantly weaponizing the government.
Hey, people. Let’s talk about cable TV.
One of my favorite TV shows is I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson, a highly-memeable, surrealist sketch comedy series on Netflix with two seasons under its belt (and a third in the works). And of the many belly laugh-inducing bits on the show, my favorite is this two-minute clip from the first episode of the show’s second season:
In it, Robinson plays a representative for a (fake) channel called Corncob TV. Robinson makes a direct-to-camera plea to viewers to contact cable TV provider Spectrum and demand that it not drop Corncob from its lineup. Should Spectrum follow through with its plan to remove Corncob from its offerings, the company’s subscribers would no longer be able to watch their favorite Corncob TV shows, such as Coffin Flop, the network’s biggest hit. As this is ITYSL, the premise of Coffin Flop is intentionally a bit silly — the show that is nothing other than “hours and hours of footage of real people falling out of coffins at funerals,” as Robinson says in the sketch.
As clips of body after body falling out of coffins play on screen, Robinson begins melting down on camera, arguing with fictional critics and declaring that “The guys at Spectrum think I’m just some dumb hick” and, “And people are mad at me because I showed a bunch of naked dead bodies with their spread blue butts flying out of boxes?” before looking into the camera and threatening the viewer.
It’s absurd. I think it’s an amazing piece of comedy (but definitely understand that it’s not everyone’s cup of tea). I love it.
So anyway, I’ve been thinking a lot about that “Spectrum” ITYSL sketch lately.
The sketch is a near-perfect satire of the types of PSAs actual networks will run if they’re trying to play hardball with a service provider (Spectrum, Comcast, DirecTV, Dish Network, etc.) during the final months of an expiring contract while trying to negotiate a new deal to determine carriage fees moving forward. Carriage fees are what service providers pay networks per subscriber (there is no one rate, as these are negotiated directly between the cable companies and the individual channels). In other words, it’s a fee paid by the service providers (Spectrum, et al.) to the networks (Corncob TV, for instance) for the right to carry a network’s content. There’s nothing particularly new about these sorts of disputes or the often hyperbolic ways in which networks leverage their viewers to put pressure on the providers.
For instance, in October, Disney and Dish Network clashed over the renewal of their carriage contract. After failing to come to an agreement before the expiration of their deal, Disney yanked 20 channels from Dish’s line-up, including ESPN, FX, Disney Channel, Freeform, and others. Two days later, the companies reached a new agreement, and the channels were restored.
And while it’s not out of the ordinary for a network to embrace a bit of puffery or for the carrier to get in a few digs of its own. For instance, in January 2019, Tribune Broadcasting pulled some of its channels from Spectrum’s services. In response, Spectrum filled the blank channel spaces where Tribune’s stations would have normally been with a looping PSA with blistering lines like, “Tribune is seeking excessive fees for its broadcast station as well as forcing consumers to pay for networks like WGN, which very few people watch,” and, “This is how Tribune Broadcasting operates. Driven by greed, they’ve pulled their channels from other distributors over the recent years as a negotiating tactic.”
My favorite line from the accompanying “GetTheFactsAboutTribune.com” website:
Why is Tribune acting this way? Perhaps it’s because they entered into an agreement to be purchased and are trying to make lucrative packages for their executives after the transaction.
But within a week or so, Tribune and Spectrum had come to a new agreement. See? Tribune tried to make it look like Spectrum was keeping people from watching their favorite shows, and Spectrum tried to convince customers of the opposite when Tribune pulled their channels. (Tribune did take advantage of the fact that its old contract with Spectrum ended during the NFL playoffs that year, making good on a threat to pull their channels during that time.)
This is all normal (and part of why I love the ITYSL sketch). But what I’m about to discuss? Not normal.
Last month, DirecTV announced that it would be dropping the right-wing infotainment channel Newsmax from its lineup. According to DirecTV, Newsmax asked for “rate increases [that] would have led to significantly higher costs that we would have to pass on to our broad customer base,” and the somewhat-struggling cable provider opted to just drop the channel. (DirecTV’s reasoning will become clear in a moment.)
Newsmax responded to this by accusing DirecTV of “censorship,” based on, I don’t know, “anti-conservative bias” or something like that. Honestly, it doesn’t really matter. This is the normal stuff where the companies both try to frame the other party in the negotiation as monstrously as possible.
It should be noted that Newsmax’s past agreement with DirecTV didn’t include carriage fees at all. DirecTV agreed to carry Newsmax as part of their cable packages, and Newsmax was free to make revenue through ad revenue/commercials. DirecTV wanted to keep that arrangement, but Newsmax demanded to be paid a fee on a per-subscriber basis (which means that the channel would get paid for every DirecTV subscriber, whether they watch Newsmax or not). DirecTV, understandably, said no to this new demand.
But hey, where else are you going to get this kind of quality programming?
Claims that this was the result of “anti-conservative bias” are false. DirecTV just added The First, another right-wing network, run and staffed by the same kind of Fox News has-beens that run and staff Newsmax. The First features shows hosted by Dana Loesch, the right-wing former NRA spokesperson; Jesse Kelly, a right-wing commentator who has expressed support for a new civil war; certified creep Bill O’Reilly, and former OAN host Liz Wheeler. Does this sound like a company that is “censoring” conservatives? No, it’s propping them up. When faced with this reality, Newsmax rushed out to complain that DirecTV had “22 liberal news channels” that it was paying for (I’m assuming that Newsmax thinks that CNN is “liberal,” which is hilariously wrong).
To get angry about this would be the equivalent of me throwing a fit and claiming that I’m being “canceled” whenever someone signs up for a free trial of The Present Age (please subscribe) but doesn’t convert to a paid subscriber once the trial is over (as many people on the free trial don’t). Instead of just acknowledging that this is normal, Newsmax went into full-on victim mode — which, again, is dishonest, but not out of the ordinary.
Here’s where things get a bit abnormal.
On January 20, 42 Republican members of Congress sent a letter to the CEOs of AT&T, DirecTV, and TPG Capital accusing DirecTV of “actively working to limit conservative viewpoints on its system” by dropping Newsmax. Additionally, the letter makes a not-so-vague threat to investigate DirecTV. While the accusations being made are vague/baseless/not-actually-something-Congress-should-have-anything-to-do-with, being dragged in front of the House of Representatives to testify about inane nonsense is one of those things that CEOs would rather not have to deal with.
It’s a hassle, it can make for bad PR, it’s time-consuming, it can be resource-consuming, and so on. Sending these sorts of letters with hints that the recipient do something lest they find themselves under investigation is meant to pressure the recipient to act. And members of Congress do this all the time. Sometimes, it can be for a good and valid reason related to standard congressional oversight stuff, but other times, as Republicans have done quite a bit in recent years, it’s to put pressure on companies that clearly aren’t breaking any laws. This is how we ended up with congressional hearings about Diamond & Silk being briefly banned from Facebook and other nonsense.
In February 2021, two Democrats did send letters to executives at AT&T, Roku, Verizon, and others, urging them to do something about lies being spread about the 2020 election and COVID-19 by outlets like Fox News, Newsmax, and OAN. While I understand the sentiment here (this was just a month after a mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an unsuccessful effort to help Republican members of Congress overturn the 2020 election results), I’m of the opinion that these members of Congress (Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA) and former Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-CA)) overstepped.
Here’s where it would be easy to go, “See? Both sides do it,” as I performatively wipe the dust off my hands. That doesn’t quite capture what’s happening in the big picture, however. No offense to Eshoo or McNerney, but they haven’t exactly been “big” names in Congress, at least not for some time. The Republican letter to DirecTV about Newsmax, on the other hand, was signed by Reps. Elise Stefanik, Ken Buck, James Comer, Paul Gosar, Andy Biggs, Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, Ronny Jackson, Nancy Mace, and other GOP newsmakers.
And, well, it continued from there. This wasn’t just a one-off letter. This is a concerted effort within the Republican Party to strongarm companies into doing their bidding that in the days since I started writing this piece, has only gotten more intense. These are authoritarian actions and precisely the kind of “weaponization of government” the Republican party pretends to be against. It’s long past time to stop caving to them and to stop pretending that these people care about “freedom” or “liberty.” No, they’re whiny fascists and they should be told to kick rocks.
This shows just how dependent the GOP is on their weaponized "news" channels for keeping the rage and support of their ageing white supremacist/fascist backers going.
I don’t believe I’ve repeated here my standing offer: $100 to the charity or campaign of choice for the first person to respond to a question from a Republican congress member with “Fck off clown.”